Huntington Gardens - March 2008
"The things I miss most about Australia are the smells and the sounds of Aussie bushland", says each expat after they've been here for a few months and the memory of Australia echos in their brain like a long lost coo-ee.
There aren't too many songbirds around this part of town, and most disappear for the winter, so it was a pure delight to visit the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens this March and take a stroll through the Aussie bush with birds chirping merrily and the odd gum leaf floating down in the breeze.
The Americans in our party giggled that our "Aussie Garden" was less like a garden and more like a mess of bark, leaves, and a mosh posh of bushes and shrubs plonked all over the shop. Yet we felt most at home. Though it was most odd to find a squirrel up a gum tree instead of the usual koala or two.
We fawned over the fiery bottle brush, and the sunny wattle blooms, until our eyes welled up ... not so much from nostalgia, but allergies. Hmm, perhaps we didn't miss the wattle all that much after all.
After Australia, we were headed home to the USA, via China and Japan, and some other beautiful gardens too.
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